Fall From Grace
by GlacialAnteater
Summary: What happens when the line between liberation and barbarity is blurred?
1. Intro

He stepped off the train, his suitcase by his side. What pitiful few possessions he still had were in that case. He'd lost the picture of his family a long time ago, not that it mattered**.** He had lost them a long time ago. He walked down the platform, glancing up at the Breencast above him and then at the Vortigaunt sweeping away rubbish to his right. He passed through several checkpoints and gates. He barely noticed anything. His mind was elsewhere, as it had been for some time. He passed by a timetable, barely hearing a man muttering something about trains leaving but not arriving, or was it the other way round? He didn't care enough to stop and ask; he just kept going.

He was stopped by a civil protection officer just a short distance before the station's exit.

The officer threw a can to the floor, motioning with his stunstick.

He thought to himself that the officer probably did this every day.

The officer shouted at him.

He looked at the officer and smiled. He was planning on doing this somewhere else, somewhere more public, but this just seemed... right. He took a deep breath in and brought the smile back to his face.

A stunstick flared.

The officer gave a final warning

He thought of his family, long gone now, and did what he'd been preparing for all morning, a relatively small act, but with large consequences.

He pulled a small string in his sleeve, setting off the explosive in his suitcase. It was small, but it packed a punch (Or so he was told).

You could feel the explosion from a block away; it rattled windows and shook buildings. The explosion was still fairly small, it only killed a civil protection officer and two civilians, one of which was the bomber himself, yet it heralded the dawn of a new era, one that many would seek to avoid.


	2. Chapter 1

Alexey felt the ground shudder beneath his feet. He kept moving, adjusting his jacket as he did so. The combine were a little more relaxed in this city, somewhat out of necessity; it helped keep the restless local population in check. Decades under soviet rule had taught this area a thing or two about resisting occupation. Alexey stood at around 190 centimetres tall, though he'd like others to believe that it was more than that. He had a slim, muscular physique and distinct Middle Eastern features, which didn't exactly help him to 'blend in' when he was relocated to Eastern Europe.

"Christ" He thought to himself "Nikki wasn't lying; it really did pack a punch."

Nikki was his source for anything that had anything to do with an explosion. He'd visited her a few days ago looking for "The biggest fucking boom that you can get out of a suitcase." She had delivered.

He moved quickly, knowing that he had to get the timing right for what he was about to do. He had taken the first right when he left the station and he had kept walking until he reached a small, seemingly empty building. At first glance, it looked identical to those around it: the paint was fading, the walls had cracks that were far too large to be safe, and the door was boarded up. But a closer inspection would prove that this building was anything but abandoned. Tiny cameras could just be seen in the cracks of the walls and an unusual amount of combine wiring ran around and into this building. He turned into the alleyway to his left and made his way down the side of the building.

When he reached the side door of the building, he pulled a weapon from the inside pocket of his jacket. It was a Heckler and Koch USP pistol with a silencer attached to the front. It fired a rather intimidating .45 calibre round, capable of taking down a civil protection officer with ease. He put the pistol back after giving it a quick check.

He pulled out a small wad of plastic explosive (Another quality product from Nikki) and placed a little bit on the lock and on each of the hinges before putting some wire between each of them and his detonator. He glanced around the alleyway, making sure there was nobody nearby. He got his pistol out again, flicking off the safety. He took a deep breath and pushed down on the detonator.

The door flew off its hinges and landed a full metre away from the frame. He rushed into the room, gun up. Two officers sat stunned at a large combine computer, two quick bullets to the head dealt with them before they knew what was going on. He swept his gun to the right and fired at a third officer three times, the first two shots smacking into his chest and the third slamming into the bridge of his nose. He saw a fourth officer reaching for his pistol just off to his left side. Alexey brought his gun back round and fired a further four holes into the officer, spraying a grotesque mix of blood and brain matter all over the wall.

He moved into the back room, sweeping his gun from left to right before grabbing a small metal box, about 10 centimetres in diameter, from a bench against the far wall. He left the room and walked over to the computer, deleting the security footage that the building's cameras had no doubt shot.


	3. Chapter 2

Alexey took a step out the door, glancing first to his right before turning to the left to see two officers.

"Citizen!" One of the officers shouted as they both reached for their pistols. The officer began to finish his sentence, but instead let out a garbled, croaking noise from his respirator.

Alexey quickly turned his gun on the next officer before squeezing the trigger, only to hear a loud 'Click'. He didn't waste a moment, turning around and sprinting down the alleyway as fast as he could. He heard the officer frantically calling backup on his radio whilst trying to keep up with the suspect.

"Outbreak! Outbreak! Anti-Citizen is armed, officer down!"

Alexey slammed his shoulder into a door to his left, breaking it down. He ran through the disused apartment building, trying desperately to find a way out of a deteriorating situation. Two bullets flew past his head, hitting a door and sending splinters of wood through the air. Alexey turned around for a moment to see two officers running towards him, guns raised. He had reached the end of the hallway and immediately leapt through the glass door into a stairwell, flattening his back against the wall next to the doorway and grabbing a shard of glass as he did so.

The heavy boots of the officers could be heard running towards the door, firm in the belief that their suspect was still fleeing them at full pace. The first officer kicked open what was left of the door and attempted a left turn down the staircase. Alexey leapt out from the wall and immediately thrust the shard of glass at the officer's throat, creating a deep cut. The officer was pushed against the wall, allowing Alexey deal with the other threat. The other officer swore loudly as his partner desperately gagged for air.

He raised his pistol, but was tackled to the ground before he managed to fire. Alexey had the officer on the floor, punching him in the jaw. The officer tried to lift his gun up, but was stopped when Alexey grabbed his wrist, snapping it to prevent him from grabbing the weapon. Alexey grabbed another shard of glass from the floor with his free hand and stabbed it into the officer's stomach repeatedly, leaving the officer lying on the floor, clutching his stomach.

Alexey grabbed two of the magazines from the officer's belt, reloading his own gun as he ran up the staircase. He went about three floors up before he heard more officers on the ground floor. He ran into the hall, seeing a window at the end of the hallway, with the window from the adjacent building less than a metre from it. He ran down to the end of the hallway, leaping through the window and into the next building, rolling along the hard wooden boards.

The building had the same layout as the last, no doubt a product of soviet-era creativity. Alexey was already on the staircase by the time the officers reached the window. The Civil Protection were in a state of utter confusion, not at all helped by the fact that half the officers in the area had responded to the train station after the explosion. None of the officers knew exactly where Alexey was. The ranking officer on the scene was barking orders to the others, attempting to apprehend the rogue citizen.

"I think he went through the window! Roger that, patrol team two, sweep the building, teams three and four, continue upstairs. Dispatch, we need additional units, we have at least six officers down, do we have any gunships in the area?"

Alexey had gotten down to the ground floor of the building when he heard the front door being kicked down. He quickly took cover behind an old fridge and took in the situation, he was cut off from his thoughts by the sound of the front door crashing down. The officers were shouting to eachother in their scrambled voices, rushing towards the staircase on the other side of the room. Three officers rushed up the staircase, leaving one to guard the entrance. Alexey waited until they were on the second floor before spinning out from the fridge and firing two bullets into the officer, resulting in the tell-tale flatline noise of a dead officer. The officers on the floor above shouted into their radios as they rushed downstairs, but Alexey was nowhere to be found when they reached their dead comrade.

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**Please review it! Good or bad, I want your opinion!**


	4. Chapter 3

Trudging through the sewers was never a pleasant undertaking, nor was it something that Alexey found himself doing very often. The stench of human waste coupled with the threat of having your head smashed in by a psycho who hasn't seen sunlight in a year is enough to keep most people out of the underside of City 37. But whether this situation was fortunate, due to it allowing Alexey to escape a _very _bad situation, or whether it was unfortunate that there was no other way to escape was the only question in Alexey's mind as he waded through knee-deep sewage. He had narrowly escaped a trip to Nova Prospekt through a hatch leading into the cities sewers in the basement of the apartment block.

After an hour or so of making his way through the rat infested maze, a ladder presented itself. It was a short climb to the surface, after which Alexey emerged in a similar building to that which he had entered the sewers from. Most residents of the building gave Alexey a funny look or made an attempt to cover their noses in some way as he continued upstairs.

A door greeted Alexey when he got to the sixth floor, an unusual sight considering the combine raids that took place. He knocked on the wooden frame of the door, and was greeted with a loud shout from the woman inside.

"Who the hell is it! And what the hell do you want at such an ungodly hour!"

Alexey smirked at the response and shouted back, "What? Am I not allowed to knock on your door at one in the afternoon?"

"I asked you a question! Who the hell is it?" the woman responded.

"It's Civil Protection" Alexey sarcastically replied. "Now open up before I kick your door down!"

There was some shuffling from within the room and numerous locks could be heard unlocking before the door finally flung open to reveal a young Russian woman, probably in her mid thirties.

"Get the hell in here before I break your damn nose." She growled, obviously not as amused as Alexey was.

Alexey raised his hands in surrender and replied with a cheeky smile "Alright, we wouldn't want you to lose your temper now would we, Nikki?"

Once inside, Nikki made her way to the desk at the far side of the room and picked up a cardboard box by the window sill. She tossed it to him.

"There." She said, in a somewhat less agitated tone, "Payment for your last job."

Alexey tore open the box to retrieve its contents: One Glock 18C (one of the few pistols capable of fully automatic fire), two blocks of Belgium Chocolate (Worth their weight in gold, literally) and an incendiary grenade.

Nikki tore him from his thoughts on the contents of the box.

"I do hope you haven't made a mess of my carpet for no good reason" She said, pointing to his shit-stained jeans. "Because unless you've got the damn box, you're getting me a new damn rug"

"I have_ a_ box. And after what I went through to get it, you'd want to hope it's the right one," he replied as he loaded his new pistol and examined it.

"Well, how many small metal boxes could the combine possible possibly ha -" She was cut off by Alexey giving out a loud "Shhhh!" and holding a finger to his lips. He heard movement outside the door, heavy footsteps that could only come from boots. It wasn't all that unusual for someone to be wearing a pair of boots, but this sounded too rushed, too organised, too combine...

He listened carefully to the sounds outside whilst looking around the room for an escape route. The window looked like the only option. Alexey was looking at the neighbouring building when something caught his eye.

"SNIPER!" He instinctively yelled out as he dived to the floor.

A shot rang out, smashing the glass window and flying into the room.

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**Very Sorry for taking so long on this one. Unfortunately, I have a life to deal with! It tends to get in the way! Please review, it makes feel good!**


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